Rachel Alexander 09 - Without a Word

that hitchhiking was against the laws of New York City anyway, but that wasn’t the point. Someone still could have stopped to pick up Sally and Roy. People broke laws all the time, for any reason you might imagine.
    Not one car stopped for me during the first hour I tried hitching. It could have been because I wasn’t seventeen years younger than I was, blonde and really beautiful. It could have been that with all the bad press pit bulls got, no one wanted a strange pit bull in their car. On top of everything else, Dashiell is white, and while everyone thinks there’s nothing scarier than a black dog, and that may be so during the day, there’s nothing eerier than a white dog in moonlight. Dashiell, glowing in the dark, his eyes an iridescent yellow in oncoming headlights, looked like everyone’s worst nightmare. But some of the drivers never saw Dashiell. Twice he was hidden from view by parked cars. Once there was a Dumpster in the way. Still, no one stopped. No one even slowed down. People might stop, or not stop, for any number of reasons. I’d never know why, and worst of all, none of this told me whether Sally had been able to get a ride.
    Near the end of the second hour, or what seemed like the second hour, I wondered what the hell I thought I was doing. But in some ways, I’m like Dashiell. Once I get an idea in my head, I have trouble letting go of it. So I kept trying. Halfway through the third hour, I got a better idea. I headed back toward Leon’s block, wanting to try a different route, starting where Sally would have started, from her home. I walked north, turned the comer, and headed a block west to Washington Street and then north again toward the meatpacking district, where, for one reason or another, all the cars slowed down. I didn’t think I’d pass for one of this particular stroll’s transvestite hookers, not in my faded jeans, work boots and clean scrubbed face, but at least the traffic wouldn’t be speeding by.
    I began to read what was on the huge semis parked nose-in on either side of the street, another reason that traffic was slower as they negotiated the slalom path of the meat market during working hours. It was an off hour for deliveries, but there were still a lot of markets open, a lot of trucks pulling in to unload poultry from Kansas, pork from Ohio and Nebraska, beef all the way from Montana, the refrigerated trucks so loud it would have been difficult to hear anything else. The first truck stopped for me before I got to Little West Twelfth Street.
    “Where you going, little lady?” he asked, leaning toward me, his hand on the passenger door. If picking up hitchhikers was illegal in New York, it was twice as illegal for truck drivers. Company policy forbade it and it said so right on the side of the truck.
    “As far as I can get,” I told him. “I’ve had it with New York.” He patted the seat. “Hop in,” he told me.
    I held up Dashiell’s leash.
    “Sure, your pooch can come, too.”
    “Where are you headed?” I asked.
    “Back to Illinois. A little company will help keep me awake.”
    I nodded. “Thanks,” I said. “I was thinking I’d go north.“
    “Suit yourself,” he said, pulling the door closed. The truck made a sound as if it was exhaling right before he drove off.
    I watched out for the hookers, careful not to impose on their territory, a gaffe which could get my throat slit with a razor blade. The next truck was going to Georgia, the one after that to North Carolina. While none of the cars stopped, about half the trucks passing did. Only one guy asked me, “How much?” The others were all clear that I wasn’t that kind of girl.
    I didn’t need to stay out any longer. If I wondered if it were possible for Sally to get out of the city with no money, no credit cards and a dog, I had my answer. It was possible. Whether or not that had happened was another story altogether.
    I liked walking Dashiell in the meatpacking district dur-I ing the day. The side streets were pretty empty, even with all the recent gentrifying, pricey restaurants and pricier shops. It was a place I could take him off leash and not bother any-j one, a place where there were always dog treasures to be found, a dropped work glove, an old boot, an empty water bottle. It would be the perfect place for Roy to get the chance to run, too, but Sally wasn’t the one who walked Roy. It was Leon who often took the dog with him when he went out shooting. Had Leon worked in the